June 2nd, 2008

For Your Enjoyment

This is my CBC3 Radio Playlist. I think it’s so clever that you can make a playable list of your favourite CanRock, and then send it to your friends so that they can experience what it’s like to live in your aural landscape. I don’t know if anyone cares to listen to mine, but if you have one (or get inspired and build one) I’d love the link, as I am musically ravenous these days. When I like a song, I like it 15 times in a row.

I have read enough acknowlegement pages to know that many writers thank a particular song or album they have listened to on repeat throughout the writing (and/or they thank their housemates and neighbours for putting up with it). I am hoping that my relationship with the “repeat” button has more to do with my literary tendencies than my obsessive ones. Not all songs, no matter how beloved, are musically or lyrically complex to stand up to this treatment (sorry, Avril.) To listen to a 3 minute song for 3 hours, it’s got to have a lot of elements in play. If you are looking for recommendations, Wintersleep and The Arcade Fire both stand up to the challenge quite well (they’re on the playlist).

Another thing, completely unrelated, that you might enjoy is that Diane Schoemperlen did a 12 or 20 Questions or at rob mclennan’s blog. I’ve been waiting for this one (I have full faith rob will get everyone eventually), not only because Schoemperlen is so witty in everything she writes (not everyone who writes good fiction writes good non-fiction *about* writing fiction [witness that sentence]). The other reason: everytime I read one of these and reach question 8 (when was the last time you ate a pear?), I think of the Schoemperlen storylette, “Small Room with Pears” (from her brilliant Forms of Devotion) and thought the story would be referenced when the author herself answered #8. But she doesn’t bring it up, which was a small disappointment, but still, her answers were quite wonderful to read. Enjoy!

Resurrection/livin’ in the past
RR